<Anchor> It is a
friendly economic time.
Reporter Kim Hye-min is here.
Reporter Kim, the controversy over performance pay of conglomerates has been continuing since a while ago this year.
But you said that this is a trend that is spreading more and more to other large companies right now?
<Reporter>
SK hynix started the controversy over performance pay.
Although the operating profit doubled, employees said that they paid only 20% of their annual salary as before. A fourth-year employee asked Lee Seok-hee to disclose the method of calculating the incentives directly by e-mail.
SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won came forward and evolved, and the standards for calculating incentives have changed this time.
But there were also complaints from employees of other large corporations who watched this.
It is rapidly spreading to other conglomerates such as SK Telecom, Hyundai Motor Company, Samsung Electronics, and LG Electronics.
Some companies have raised their wages to a record level this year to appease their employees, and now, even in the process of restructuring their business, they are also listening to their voices.
<Anchor>
Reporter Kim, but this controversy over performance pay is happening only for large corporations right now.
However, most of them were very difficult because of the corona, but in large companies that have a stable salary, they do this with an incentive pay, I think it may be a little uncomfortable to see.
<Reporter>
At first, I thought this a lot.
However, this issue of incentive pay is a little different from the general wage conflict.
First of all, MZ generation of young employees led the controversy. MZ generation refers to millennials and generation Z.
They were born in the early 80s and early 2000s.
These employees don't just insist on paying a lot of wages.
More focus is on "I want to get paid for what I do," that is, to transparently disclose the criteria for calculating incentives.
In addition, while the annual salary increase rate of executives is very high every year, the wages of employees are often not able to keep up with this or rather decrease. I would like to hear the good reason for this.
Therefore, I want to be evaluated by focusing on individual abilities, moving away from the organizational culture that used to regard sacrifice and conformity as only virtue in the past.
<Anchor>
So it means that you want to get some proper evaluation.
Among the things we just talked about, the salaries of executives rise a lot, but the employees don't. You said this, but in fact, the wage gap between real executives and employees is huge.
<Reporter>
Recently, statistics comparing the salary gap between executives and employees of large corporations came out.
Last year, I'm talking about unregistered executives at the top 500 companies in Korea, that is, executives in positions such as managing directors and managing directors. They were paid an average of 4.4 times more annually than ordinary employees.
As of last year, the biggest difference in salary between executives and employees was distributors, followed by IT electrical and electronic fields such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
There was also a significant gap between service industries such as Nexon and telecommunications companies.
Among the companies I have mentioned now, there are a number of companies that have recently been controversial in performance pay.
We could see the difference in salary for each company, and the difference in salary between executives and employees at E-Mart was the largest at 18.2 times.
Daeyu Atech, Shinsegae, Coway, and Orion.
<Anchor> It's
really a big difference in salaries between executives and employees.
But among the executives, there is also a CEO.
I think the difference between the CEO and the employees will be bigger.
Is it really?
<Reporter>
Recently, Hotel Shilla and Korean Air were representative, and Hotel Shilla was in the red because of the Corona 19 last year, the sales were almost cut in half.
By the way, CEO Boo-jin Lee's annual salary was 4.8 billion won, a 52% increase from last year.
Hanjin Group chairman Cho Won-tae also saw a 40% increase in annual salary last year, in contrast to the average 15% decrease in salaries for Korean Air employees.
The gap between employees of large corporations and registered directors like CEOs is more than 10 times larger.
The company with the largest gap was NCsoft, but the gap is as much as 98.4 times.
CJ CheilJedang's registered directors were 93.6 times higher, while Hotel Shilla, LG Electronics, and Samsung Electronics were 40 times higher.
In the United States, it is very important to obtain the consent of the members to the specific calculation of the incentive system.
Experts pointed out that Korean companies also need to transparently change the compensation system for incentives as the concept of lifelong work is disappearing, and that employees must obtain a certain amount of consent.